Thursday, September 25, 2014

These were taken a couple of years back, at the Lowry House. The picture is of one of the several young actresses who has portrayed Ann Lowry (For Ann's story, and the history of the Lowry House haunting, including my own recent experience, scroll down a post or three.) wearing period dress and posing at the window where Ann is most often reported. The orange glow around the fringe of her dress is a lamp on the floor behind her. Nothing paranormal about that, I'm afraid. But when the picture was developed (actually, as it's a digital shot, printed out), the photographer noticed an unusual "smudge," an imperfection in the photo.Here is the original: Do you see the "blemish?" It's on her shoulder, there. It is most assuredly NOT a part of the dress, and only appeared in the photograph. Curious about it, the photographer enlarged the picture for a better look. That's when she discovered how much it looks like a person's face, or part of a person's face. It almost looks like the Phantom's mask in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera musical, a partial-face mask allowing the actor to sing without interference. Take a look at it enlarged, if your computer will allow it. (The one I'm currently using won't; rather it lets ME enlarge it to examine it, but it refuses to publish the enlarged photo here. I don't know if the problem is on my end of the line or if it's Blogger's fault. Oh, well.) Anyway, take my word for it. When you're looking at it in a larger form, you can easily see what appears to be eyes, the outline of a nose, a cheek, and even curls atop where the forehead should be. Try it yourself. It shows up a little better when the colors are inverted:

Later on, when someone else was looking at the photo, she exclaimed, "Oh my gosh! There's a child in the background!" We looked. At first we didn't see anything. But then we did. Do you see it? It's not as clear as the face, just a vague shadow. (Which could have been the actress's shadow--except that the light was positioned BEHIND her and would have cast her shadow FORWARD, as was the light that was coming in through the window also streaming TOWARDS the camera.) It's just an outline. Like one of those puzzle pictures, where you have to stare at it for a minute and let your eyes go out of focus before you see the other picture hidden within it. Try it with this one. Do you see?Here. I outlined it for out, along with the face.

People claiming to be able to detect the presence of spirits have told us that one of the ghosts at the Lowry House is that of a child. Is that a little boy or little girl standing behind the chair there in this photo? Was it this same little ghost who was messing with me a few weeks back? (See previous post.) We've researched the history of the House for mention of a child having died there but found nothing. There are gaps in the history. We DO know that a doctor lived there, Dr. Lowry, and that he may well have treated patients out of the House. It's certainly possible that a child died there at some point. Also, one of the runaway slaves hiding at the House (Again, see previous post.) could have been a child, and died while there. These pics do not constitute hard evidence. I wouldn't expect them to convince any skeptic. But they sure are neat, huh? And they sure are suggestive. All I can say for certain is that this picture was taken in the room where people have most often reported experiencing their "ghostly" experiences. That the window there in the picture is the same window where different people at different times have reported seeing a young woman peering down at them at a time when no one was in the House and in fact the House was derelict and locked up tight. This room is also across a short hall from the office, formerly the master bedroom (which opens onto the secret room wherein runaway slaves used to shelter), wherein I experienced MY brush with the supernatural. (See previous...Oh, heck, you should have it figured out by now. READ MY PREVIOUS POSTS!) To quote Rorschach from Watchmen: "What do YOU see?"

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

All us "Ripperologists" are ready to pull our hair out (The ones who HAVE hair, anyway. I am not one of them.) over the "blockbuster" news report stating that jack the Ripper has been positively identified through DNA evidence after 125+ years as Aaron Kosminski. The fact that this is being reported--and accepted--as legitimate is downright disturbing to me. Will people nowadays accept ANYthing without any sort of verification? Will the media report ANYthing as true? Isn't it the responsibility of journalists to check their facts before they run with a sensational story? If they'll be so sloppy and careless with an admittedly innocuous story like this one, aren't they doing the same thing with the reports that actually matter? It worries me. It should worry you.Since they won't do it, I will. Fact check time, friends.This "evidence" has been seen and evaluated by NO ONE not involved in the production of this new book, which conveniently goes on sale this coming Tuesday. The fact that they are revealing the "evidence" not in any peer-reviewed forum but in the pages of their own prospective bestseller, that alone should make us suspicious. The Cheezman smelleth a rat. It is true that Kosminski was the favored suspect of Scotland Yard at the time of the killings. He was named by chief Inspector Abberline (the guy Johnny Depp played in From Hell) as the culprit. But there are several ways in which Kosminski doesn't fit as the Ripper. Primarily for me is the testimony of several physicians, given both at the time of the murders and in the century since, that the "operation" performed on "Dark Annie" Chapman, in which the murderer surgically removed her uterus in near-complete darkness, could ONLY have been the handiwork of someone with medical training. And Kosminski had NONE. If this report turns out to be genuine--and that very much remains to be seen--all they will have proven conclusively is that Kosminski was in contact with ONE of the victims and was POSSIBLY her murderer. The evidence for that would never hold up in court. And IF the report proves genuine, that means that somebody ELSE killed Dark Annie. Of course the theory that there were in fact TWO killers has been around for some time, but still. To claim that the mystery is "solved"? That rings hollow, smacks of charlatanism, and makes all us serious students of the case cringe. It sounds like exactly what it is: a sales pitch. Don't fall for it, mi amigos. Of course I probably shouldn't complain. My theatrical troupe will be debuting my new play, The Belles of Whitechapel, which is based on the Ripper murders, in a few weeks. In that respect, the timing of this new "revelation" couldn't be better. Free publicity for me. I'll take it.The difference is, I will admit right up front that my play is a fictionalized account of true events. Not the other way around, like this forthcoming book probably is.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

I have to preface this by
saying, I don’t have a clue how the whole thing works. Do ghosts exist and if
so, what is a “ghost” exactly, anyway? A psychical impression, like a
photograph, emotional residue? Leftover “energy?” A disembodied soul? A
manifestation of telekinetic abilities? Folks who claim to be experienced in
the paranormal would answer (d) All of the Above. Or more accurately, any one
of the above. I don’t know. I do know that I’ve never had a “paranormal”
experience, a brush with the “supernatural.” I’ve gone into the Lowry House
(“The Historic Lowry House,” to use its proper title, in Huntsville, Alabama,
now serving as home base for all my theatrical endeavors) a whole lotta times
and never seen, heard or felt anything I couldn’t readily explain away. Old
houses creak, and the imagination’s a purdy powerful thang. Yes, there was that
time with the burglar alarm, when it kept going off for no apparent reason. But
you could rationalize that away as a case of faulty wiring. And yes, I have
watched the video the group of paranormal explorers filmed when they spent the
night a year or so ago, heard the very audible CRASH! So loud that it shook the
camera on its tripod, a sound for which the explorers could find no source,
finding nothing amiss anywhere in the House. But c’mon, you can’t say for certain that it had its source in the
supernatural. Just because you can’t readily think of a simple, logical
explanation doesn’t mean there isn’t one. An unusually large bat, for example,
losing its sense of radar-guided direction and slamming into the outside wall.
See, I just came up with a possible plausible explanation that doesn’t involve
the paranormal. It’s easy to do. I do it all the time.

I am blessed or cursed,
depending on how one looks at it, with a divided mind. I am a natural skeptic.
I also very much want to believe in the supernatural. What a dull, lifeless
world we would live in without it. A world without magic, without mystery, and
as Albert Einstein once said, the mysterious is the grandest thing a human
being can encounter. It makes life worth the living. On the other hand, or
other mind, if you will, that other half of my brain is always seeking to
explain things away in innocuous terms, always resorting to Occam’s Razor, the
dictate that “the simplest explanation is usually the correct explanation.” Or,
as my college Psychology professor would have said, “Don’t believe anything without concrete proof!” Half
the brain demands proof, the other half is content to enjoy the mystery. That’s
my lot. So no, I cannot in honesty say that I’ve experienced anything beyond
the norm, which is what “paranormal” means. Or at least I couldn’t say that
before yesterday. Now? I’m not so sure.

I’d gone into the House a
lot, spent countless hours there and never seen, heard nor felt anything
peculiar, even knowing the location to be widely reputed as “haunted.” I also
know there are a whole lotta people who HAVE seen, heard or felt things
unusual, things lacking a simple explanation, people whose opinions I trust,
people I trust, and people whose accounts I have no reason to doubt. I was
jealous. I wanted to have one of those experiences myself. You see, those folks
who claim to be susceptible to feelings, “sensitive” to such things, to use the
word they use, who have said that the House IS inhabited by residents that we
can’t see but who are present nonetheless (among them my own lovely wifey),
those folks have told me there is nothing sinister or “negative” about the
spirits or the energy at the House. Knowing the story of the most widely known
and frequently seen ghost, Ms. Anne (Scroll down a little for that full story
in a previous post.), I know there’s no reason to expect her to behave in
anything other than a proper and respectable manner. There are even stories of
her, or one of the other spirits that may reside there in the House, going out
of their way to help someone, acting as something of a guardian angel. Thus
believing there is nothing “evil” at all about what goes on in the House, I
wanted to experience it for myself.

And now I think I have.

Here’s the play-by-play:
Yesterday I was serving as docent for the day. I was in the House alone,
waiting in case someone dropped by for a tour (the House is open to the public
5 days a week, free of charge, as an historical site). I was upstairs in the
office, working on the computer. I’d left the office door open both because the
AC in the room has been going in and out and so that I could hear if anybody
came in at the front door. As I said, the air wasn’t working properly and it
was rather warm in the room. As I hadn’t gotten my full 7 hours of sleep the
night before, combining that with the heat and my sitting still at the
computer, I started to get really sleepy. I wanted very much to take a “power
nap.” There’s a couch right outside the office door, so I went out there
instead of remaining in the office. I wanted to be able to hear if anybody came
in through the door downstairs, and my subconscious, on alert for just such a
sound, would awaken me, I knew. I left the office door open, too, to let the
air circulate. In no time at all I was dozing.

A sound awakened me. But not
the sound of the front door opening or the doorbell ringing. I listened. “What
is that?” I wondered, then shrugged and went back to sleep. Old houses make
noises, right? And the AC had been acting wonky. Two perfectly explainable
explanations for the noise. I dozed for a few minutes more. The noise awoke me
once again.

This time I thought I
recognized the sound. I said to myself, “That’s
what that sounds like.” But it could have been the AC, too, although it had not
up to that point made any such racket and it did not for the remainder of the
day, the several hours I stayed up at the House. It COULD have been the AC,
that skeptical part of my brain said, regardless of what it SOUNDS like. The
other half of my mind said, “Uh-uh, partner! I KNOW what that is, and it ain’t
no air-conditioner!” I mentally shrugged, content to let the twin halves of my
cognitive dissonance duke it out over which side was right and which was wrong.
I went back to sleep. I wasn’t at all afraid, although I was pretty sure I DID
recognize that sound, and it was definitely NOT the air-conditioner or the
House settling. To be fair, though, it was broad daylight, a lovely, sunny day,
with golden rays streaming in through the large window upstairs. (I’d put my
sunglasses on to better be able to nap; that’s how bright it was.) Had it been
late at night and dark, would I have been so bold? I dunno.

I nodded off. Once again the
noise awakened me. “Just let me sleep a little longer,” I remember thinking. A
couple more minutes passed and I was almost sawing logs again when the
telephone rang and I had to get up to answer it. “Fine, I’m up, I’m up!” I
grumbled. I answered the phone, conducted a little business, and by then was
mostly over my sleepiness.

That’s when I saw it. Laying
there on the desk. Exactly what I thought I’d heard. One of those click-top
pens. You know the sound they make when you click ‘em with your thumb really
fast, click-click, click-click,
click-click! Over and over? That’s the sound that had awakened me those
different times. To make certain, I picked up the pen and clicked it myself,
again and again. Yes. Same sound. Identical sound. IDENTICAL.

Even then, the skeptical part
of my brain said, “It could have been the AC, and it only SOUNDED like the
pen.” True, I conceded. “Or it could have been something else entirely,” the
skeptic said. Also, true, I admitted. “And did you actually SEE the pen moving
of its own accord?” it demanded. You know I didn’t, I admitted. “See!” it said
in triumph. “But,” the other part of my mind countered, “didn’t that sound you
heard, didn’t it sound an awful lot like that pen being clicked?” It sure did,
I said. “Didn’t it sound EXACTLY like that?” it said. Yes. It damn sure did.
Exactly like that.

I was good and awake at that
point. I didn’t get drowsy the rest of the day. I stayed upstairs for the most
part, working on the computer, creating the poster for my upcoming play, The Belles of Whitechapel: The Victims of
Jack the Ripper Speak. (Pardon the
plug.) The infamous pen lay right there on the desk next to me the entire time.
It never made a sound. It didn’t need to. I was awake at that point.

I might be more inclined to
dismiss the whole matter—after all, it was a relatively little thing, just a
little racket—only—ONLY. Remember those paranormal researchers I mentioned
several lines up? The ones who had spent the night at the House? One of them, a
cool guy named Scott, who had come into the House as an avowed skeptic, no,
more than that, a confirmed DISbeliever, and had left it the next day not so
firm in his disbelieving, had decided, early in the wee hours of that morning
last year, that he’d had enough of ghost huntin’ and wanted to go to sleep.
He’d gone into the office and fallen asleep in a recliner in the secret room.
The secret room is where they used to hide the runaway slaves (see previous
post about the House’s role as a stopover point on the Underground Railroad).
The room that is now the office would have been the master bedroom, and the
secret room is hidden behind a door that would have been taken as nothing more
than a closet door. The recliner sits just inside the door.Scott had fallen asleep, only to be awakened
a short time later by an unusual sound. He heard it several times through the
remainder of the night, went out into the office to look for its source,
finding nothing. But he swore the noise was coming from the office. Every time
he’d doze off, the noise would repeat itself. The next day he located the
source of the sound he’d kept hearing.

A jar of pens and pencils on
the desk. When he picked it up and shook it, the noise it made, that was
EXACTLY the noise he had heard during the night. He conceded this, and he was a
staunch disbeliever. Had been before that night, anyway.

Ah, it was just one of the
others messing with him, your inner skeptics are probably saying now. That’s
what mine said when I heard the story. Sorry, skeptics. Scott was alone in the
House at that point. Out of all the investigators, he was the only one who had
actually stayed the ENTIRE night. He was alone. He was adamant on that point.
And he’d heard that jar of pens being shaken like a castanet. He was adamant on
that point as well. And this coming from a confirmed skeptic.

It would seem that one of the
spirits just doesn’t want anybody to fall asleep upstairs.

One of my friends who claims
to be “sensitive” told me that one of our spirits at the Lowry House is that of
a child. What looks like the outline of a child IS visible in a photograph that
was taken in one of the upstairs bedrooms. And a child would be playful. That
is the overall impression I got yesterday, one of playfulness. Nothing negative
or harmful in any way. Just playful. I dunno.